


shame,

by sharptoothrabbit



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Horror, not much but it gets spooky sometimes, this is completely self-indulgent I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharptoothrabbit/pseuds/sharptoothrabbit
Summary: "Alright, Reverend?" The Parasitologist says, the quiet sound of of a blade singing as they draw a black-glass knife. It's not a question, but he pretends it is anyway."No." He rolls up his sleeve, trying to ignore the way their eyes eat at his skin, at his scars. He wishes they wouldn't do that. He knows they'll never stop."Shame," they smile.
Relationships: Everyone's gay for each other - Relationship, I don't make the rules - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

The Parasitologist is talking about something terrible, and the air around them is thrumming with something like witchcraft, something like religion. The Insomniac should be listening, but he can't help staring at their lips as they talk, grinning (something primal in the back of his brain says _baring their teeth)_ with something that's on just the wrong side of delight.

He should be paying attention. He should be listening or else he's going to be dragged into something that'll shape his nightmares for months to come, but.

They're so _pretty._

It's cruel. he thinks, for something like The Parasitologist to be beautiful. Monsters aren't supposed to have sharp features and fine bones. The pointed teeth, the glowing eyes - both concealed expertly beneath a wicked smile and tinted glasses. Unnatural warmth radiates from them, and in the cold damp of the Neath, it's enough to make him sleepy. Let down his guard, if only for a moment.

The half-Devil in front of him takes him by the wrist (the scar down his forearm burns at the touch) and drags him into a different room. Upstairs, into the attic, where forbidden things become inadvisable things. 

The Taxidermist's more unusual projects are stored up here, hidden from prying eyes. He won't look at them - the sigils carved lovingly into the skin of these faux-living creatures make the eyes glint and the skin supple in a way they hadn't been for a long time. Should never have been again.

The Parasitologist is staring at him and it makes his skin crawl. Just as he opens his mouth to ask them politely to stop, they take his hand and gently (but firmly) guide him down into a worn wooden chair. Then, there's a bowl in their hands - hewn from bone, one of their kindly Doctor's clever little crafts. He could have sworn it wasn't on the desk before.

"Alright, Reverend?" The Parasitologist says, the quiet sound of of a blade singing as they draw a black-glass knife. It's not a question, but he pretends it is anyway.

"No." He rolls up his sleeve, trying to ignore the way their eyes eat at his skin, at his scars. He wishes they wouldn't do that. He knows they'll never stop.

"Shame," they smile.

It was a game they played, once. Back when he thought he could leave this behind if he wanted. They'd drink in the evening, while the Taxidermist was out doing... something. While waiting for them to return (and they always did, stalking back through the door in the early morning with the smell of blood on their breath), they'd trade scars, and stories.

(On one occasion, The Parasitologist had unravelled the bandage around their neck. He'd asked, mostly joking, _"Were you beheaded?"_ They responded, _"Once.")_

He's getting lost again. D__n that Devil and their sharp-fanged smile.

The knife comes to rest against his palm, blade almost caressing the skin. He must have said something - or perhaps his face gave something away - because he hears them say: "You promised. Remember?"

He wakes up four hours later, no scar on his palm and no half-Devil to speak of.

-

_They arrive at Kingeater's Castle, four months after leaving Fallen London. No,_ arrive _isn't right. Kingeater's Castle is not somewhere you go to willingly. You end up there._

_The only sounds are the click of boots on stone and the rasp of surf against the rocks. The air bites at their exposed flesh as the three walk into the castle, The Parasitologist still wearing their pointed grin and The Taxidermist shivering more with excitement than with the cold._

_These people he has chosen to surround himself with (not chosen, ended up, these are not people you allow consciously into your life) are something unlike any other, he thinks, watching The Taxidermist produce a molar from their pocket and set it down as some sort of gift. A marker of appetite - fitting, he figures, for this place. The Parasitologist has already been here, absently telling a story about what they did to their Navigator the last time they visited. It's nauseating. He keeps listening._

_He wonders if he's anything like them._

_The Parasitologist takes his right hand, their body heat blistering against the chill of the Neath. The Taxidermist takes the other, and while their hands are gloved, something cold and hungry seeps down into his bones._

_There, in the middle of the castle courtyard, is a stone table. An altar. It almost makes him laugh. The stone on top is old and stained, and carved with sigils he can't stand to look at for long. The Taxidermist will understand them._

_They all raise their hands, palms facing upward, and The Parasitologist draws a ravenglass knife. They all agreed, before - he owes them each a favour. It was his idea to end up here, after all._

_The Parasitologist hands him the knife, handle warm from their grasp, and he drags it across his palm without flinching. The others follow suit, reaching out to let their blood drip onto the stone._

**(Three choices, and nothing to be gained.)**

_Kingeater's Castle stares down at him, tall and starving._

**(Lose your mind. Eat your crew. Die.)**

_Nothing._

_They go back to the ship. For the first time in years, he sleeps through the night._


	2. Chapter 2

"Reverend?"

The Taxidermist's voice is quiet and cold in the dark of the house. It hangs in the air, liminal and empty, and he finds himself wondering if this is another nightmare.

"Yes," The Insomniac responds, softly.

"Ah, good. Light a candle, would you?"

It takes him a while to find one. It takes him longer to build up the nerve to light it. He does, and at first he's terrified that The Taxidermist has gored and processed some poor bastard right here on the kitchen table, but it's not blood. It's red, but not blood. It's _wax,_ from seven completely burnt-out candles pooling on the table.

The Taxidermist is deeply, deeply strange. Things only get stranger by candlelight.

The small flame bathes their face in something warm and rich, almost enough to chase away the bone-deep absence beneath their flesh. The shadows flicker and lap at their skin, settling into the contours of their face. Making them gaunt, their expression unreadable. Their eyes are glassy and dark, and so, _so_ hungry.

Molten wax drips from their mouth.

"Sit down, I've been meaning to talk to you."

"No."

"Fair enough," they shrug, and scrape some spilled wax from a wrist with their teeth. "I'm curious, about your recent activities with The Parasitologist." He blushes, faintly, and doesn't know why. He hopes to God they haven't noticed. It takes him a while to find a response.

"I owed them a favour," is what he settles on. "It's only blood." They both know it's not, and lying is a sin, but what's one more?

"Oh, that reminds me," they smile with just enough teeth to be considered too many. "You owe _me_ a favour, too."

They begin moving towards him, stepping out further into the darkness. He won't back up - not even when they begin circling him, their hungry gaze boring into his own. It's then he finally starts to wonder if this is what they really are, in the dark, beneath all those polite smiles and eccentricities. "Give me your arm, please."

He's nothing if not a man of his word.

Rolling up his sleeve, The Insomniac bares his scarred flesh to The Taxidermist's glass-sharp stare, and perhaps more importantly, their now less-than-completely-pleasant smile.

They take his arm gently, kindly, and lean down as if to press a kiss to his hand. Like someone greeting a lady of high standing, or perhaps a new Priest. Instead, they sink their blunt teeth into his flesh - deep, deeper than he thought they could with human teeth and a too-strong bite force he _knows_ they shouldn't possess - and tear out a small chunk of him. Neatly excised, a perfect impression of their dentition on his arm, even though while it was happening he could have sworn they were struggling, determined, to rip the flesh away from the rest of him. Like a dog, shaking prey in its jaws.

The Insomniac makes a sound, something visceral and wrenching and entirely involuntary, and when he forces himself to look away from the hole in his arm, he finds The Taxidermist chewing thoughtfully.

They finish eating, and smile, his blood coating their teeth. They look almost sated.

It doesn't suit them.

"You taste like _guilt_ , dear," they tell him, taking out a needle and thread to suture the wound shut.

-

_The Taxidermist is like a well, he thinks. Not tall, from the outside, but very deep, so deep it's impossible to tell where it stops - if it ends at all. The only way to know is to throw yourself down and hope you hit solid ground at some point. As of yet, he's still falling._

_They're holding him as he trembles - another nightmare, always the same - and pressing a vial of clear liquid into his hand. For a moment he thinks it's holy water, that maybe it's finally his turn to be exorcised, but no. That would probably be rude, and The Taxidermist is polite to a fault._

_"Laudanum," they explain, gentle and kind. "Don't use it too often; only when you absolutely must sleep. I don't want any addictions, or overdoses."_

_"What, because it'd spoil the meat?" He mutters through the tremors in his jaw, barbed and unpleasant and completely uncaring as to the effect those words might have._

_They're silent, for a moment, before they sigh and run their fingers through his hair. It would be comforting, if he hadn't watch them do the same to their more... ambitious projects._

_"Because I care for you. Both of you," they say, expression hard to read in the low light. "Surely that doesn't come as too great a shock." Something slides into their expression, then. "You know, I speak a bit of Latin. Care to tell me why you were shouting exorcism prayers in your sleep?"_

_He stiffens, and grumbles something shaped vaguely like a "none of your business". They smile - that exasperated, endeared expression - and rest their face on his shoulder._

_"I used to kill Devils, with the Church," he grunts out, hoping they'll drop it if he gives them something similar to the real answer. "The prayers were just tradition."_

_The Taxidermist laughs, then, genuine and musical and without a trace of spite. "I really do like you," they say. "Even if you went around killing demons that weren't really your own, and are sometimes impolite, and won't eat dinner if I'm the one cooking."_

_"You once almost set yourself on fire trying to make toast," he points out. "And you know full well it's not that I don't like your cooking." He just doesn't trust it. He has enough problems without that bottomless, gnawing pit opening up inside his stomach, too._

_"Yes, yes, we've had this conversation before." There's a heavy pause, for a moment. Then - "I once tried to fry an egg on the back of a Deviless. It didn't quite work the way I wanted it to, and it took me a frankly unwarranted amount of time to convince her to let me do it, but I did at least win a bet."_

_"The bet you made against me, I recall," The Parasitologist says from their hitherto unnoticed position leaning against the doorframe. Neither he nor The Taxidermist startle. "Losing was deeply humiliating and even more-so ridiculous. I still can't believe I thought accompanying you to the Brass Embassy was a good idea."_

They're bickering, _part of him realises._ So I'll feel better. _It becomes white noise, through the thick, oily film of exhaustion. The Insomniac drifts, for a moment, flickering images playing behind his eyes like a broken film reel. Memories of before the Neath. The shaking begins anew - funny, he didn't realise it had stopped - but he's snapped from his reverie by a very warm weight pressing against his side._

_He knows it's The Parasitologist. He can see the faint glow their eyes cast across their face. They aren't smiling like they usually do; their fangs aren't on display, and the crooked quirk of their lips has softened from wicked to what might be affection but is probably faint amusement._

_"Sleep well, darlings, the half-Devil says, settling into a more comfortable position and letting those fever-bright eyes slip shut._

_The Taxidermist presses a soft kiss to his forehead, and does the same on his other side, their too-large nightshirt twisted underneath them in a way that will probably become a tad uncomfortable._

_The Insomniac is surrounded by people he's sure about, but nowhere near sure what to make of. For the first time, he doesn't mind. He doesn't dream, the laudanum forgotten, curled in his palm._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's right, we're doing a weird present-past thing in each chapter. hold on tight baybeee


	3. Chapter 3

The Medusa's Head is, like most of the establishments in Watchmaker's Hill, dangerous, architecturally improbable and a halfway decent place to drink yourself into oblivion.

He's taken his usual seat in the quietest corner he can find, sitting almost completely still save for the faint tremor of his hands. If he's not going to sleep tonight (and hadn't the night before, and the night before that), he might as well get drunk enough to hold back the threat of remembering and busy himself watching the fights. Mostly drunkards wrestling for rostygold, but occasionally something more interesting will rear its head.

While The Insomniac nurses his drink - something cheap and strong that _burns_ on the way down - he finds his thoughts wandering to the people he spends his time with, down here in the Neath. The Parasitologist usually prefers the pubs of Veilgarden, if only to watch honey-crazed poets and lovestruck youth glance off each other like marbles poured over a table, lost to their own little troubles. Alcohol has never done much for them anyway - their Devil's metabolism burns it up far too quickly for that. Or at least, that's what The Taxidermist theorises. 

The Taxidermist, who never ceases to surprise and concern him, shamelessly adores the sorry excuses for pubs that line the outskirts of the Tomb Colonies. The Colonies, as a rule, are so unrelentingly dull that surely not even The Taxidermist could enjoy them (not to suggest they themselves are dull, of course, merely that they're struck with an ability to find interest in the most overlooked and esoteric places), but apparently the back-room speakeasies differ far from the monotony of the rest. Half-dead folk gambling with fingers and mushroom wine, rife with smuggling rings and Tomb Colonists aching to escape the drudgery of their existence. Apparently, The Taxidermist had used their skills as a mortician to provide a hint of vitality to a Colonist, and in exchange, was taught the process to create something called a Mourning Candle. It's an odd little thing, made from the fat of the nearly-departed, something he wishes they'd told him before he picked it up to examine it. 

Scented with lavender, though. How thoughtful.

Still, the Reverend supposes it's not all that different in symbolism to Communion - the act of consuming flesh and blood, if only by metaphor. Distracted, he stares down into the still liquid of his drink, and immediately regrets it. It's not his face reflected back at him.

Quickly, he downs the bitter drink and sets it back, pointedly ignoring the phantasmagoria of his nightmares flashing behind his eyelids when he blinks. It burns in the best, most familiar way - just enough to chase away the image in the bottom of the glass. Just enough to feel like a punishment.

He wrenches his mind away from the past and grasps for something else - _anything else -_ and ends up considering his namesake in the Neath. Of course, insomnia is not so uncommon here, and it's easy to keep odd hours without any daylight, but he's yet to meet anyone afflicted in quite the same way that he is.

The Taxidermist will often go a while without sleep. A project catches their imagination and they're swept up in the madness of it, refusing to rest until it's complete. Or until their body inevitably abandons them, leaving them slumped over their desk, forearms still thickly coated in the remains of the unfortunate creature they were digging around in. When they awake, their neathglass goggles have always left marks around their dark-ringed eyes, giving them an appearance not too dissimilar to a startled Zee-bat. Illness is not uncommon when they are enraptured in their work, neglecting their body in favour of their mind's fancy. On some occasions, he and The Parasitologist have had to lock them out of the attic and smother them in quilts to keep their strange passions from consuming them whole. Perhaps it would be endearing, if he hadn't seen them half-dead from a sickness they refused to acknowledge. _(Perhaps he wouldn't think much of it if he hadn't seen them snap the bones they spent hours articulating just to scrape out the marrow with their teeth, ravenous and empty-eyed.)_ He shakes his head to dispel the thought, and turns his attention to the other member of their unusual household.

The Parasitologist, on the other hand... he has never actually seen asleep. Of course, it's only logical that they must. Most likely he just hasn't noticed, but they rarely even seem tired. Well. The Parasitologist rarely seems anything other than amused. It's infuriating. According to The Taxidermist, they do, in fact, sleep. Interestingly, when they do, they make a low, rumbling sound. Almost like a purr, resonating deep in their chest. He's never heard it himself. Even when he bolts upright, reeling from another nightmare, they're always awake.

The Insomniac goes to take another drink, and realises the glass is empty.

His somehow un-scarred palm twinges at the memory of a blade sliding across. He doesn't care to reconcile the too-warm, sharp presence that argues with him for the fun of it with the unreadable, smiling thing that draws a knife and bleeds him for a reason it won't give.

The next brawl is about to start. Rostygold shines dull on the betting tables. The Reverend gets up, shrugs off his coat.

Some blood on his knuckles will do him good.

  
-

  
_“They’re not stars. You know that, right?”_

_“Of course I do. Glim, false-stars, moonish light, whatever you want to call it. I want to call them stars.”_

_"That’s very nostalgic of you.”_

_“I used to be a Reverend, back on the Surface. Properly ordained, and all that.”_

_“And now here you are. Standing on the Wolfstack Docks, talking to a Devil and waxing poetic about the stars when there aren’t any.”_

_“Oh, shut up, Captain. You’ve never seen the Surface.”_

_“Did you forget? I’ve visited. Several times, in fact.”_

_“No, that doesn’t - you’ve never seen it without the danger of sunli_ _ght. I have.”_

_“Yet you still came down here, never to return. Care to explain why, Reverend? Perhaps you’re an excommunicated heretic. Perhaps you’re reaching for some sort of penance.”_

_“Be quiet.”_

_“You should know by now. T_ _here’s no God down here - just Salt, Stone and Storm. The Unterzee.”_

_“I’m not here to repent.”_

_“Did nobody tell you not to lie to a Devil? I can smell it on you. This place is eating you alive, Reverend. You want it to.”_

_“Exorcizamus te, omnis immunde spiritus -”_

_“Omni Satanica potestas, in nomini Jesu Christi. Yes, I’m aware."_

_“Demon.”_

_“Priest.”_

_“God, you’re insufferable.”  
_

_“I’m only half Devil, you know. Waltz into the Brass Embassy, they’d strip you to the bone. I could, if I wanted to. But I like you.”  
_

_“Really? Peculiar behaviour for a friend.”  
_

_“Never said I was a friend.”  
_

_“What are you two bickering about now?”  
_

_“We’re not bickering.”  
_

_“We were definitely bickering, and I was enjoying it immensely.”  
_

_“Alright. Don’t you want to come inside? You’ll go mad, staring at the moonish light like that.”  
_

_“What a quaint superstition.”  
_

_“What makes you think it’s a superstition? Get inside, Reverend, try to get some sleep. Captain, let’s have some supper.”  
_

_“Of course, Doctor. Sleep well, Reverend. Don’t dream.”_

**Author's Note:**

> so, welcome to this absolute disaster! this is something that's been accumulating in the notes folder on my phone, and since I've got an account on here I figured I might as well post it. I am terrible at updating this - I only write more for it when I can't sleep and I've not been that satisfied with new stuff I try to write of late. to be clear, The Insomniac uses he/him pronouns and is sometimes called Reverend. The Parasitologist, a Half-Devil that uses they/them pronouns, is otherwise called Captain. The Taxidermist uses they/them pronouns and is sometimes referred to as Doctor.


End file.
